Retiring NFL Columnist Peter King On Bill Belichick, Court Storming, Combine

Mondays during the NFL season will never be the same.

The King announced his retirement recently. NFL writing legend Peter King wrote the vastly read "Monday Morning Quarterback" for Sports Illustrated from 1997-2018 and renamed that must-read column "Football Morning in America" after switching to NBC Sports in 2018.

King, 66, discussed a wide range of topics on the Dan Patrick Show on Tuesday - how he kidnapped Boomer Esiason for an interview in 1984, what still perplexes him about Bill Belichick, what he loved about covering the Scouting Combine and how he hates court storming and the NCAA.

Patrick asked King - after covering the NFL for 40 years - what was the one answer to a question he didn't get.

Former New England coach celebrates with former quarterback Tom Brady. (Getty Images).

"I would really want to know why (former New England coach) Bill Belichick felt the need to videotape sidelines when he already was the most brilliant defensive coach, maybe of all time? That will always confuse me," King said of Spygate in 2007. The NFL slapped Belichick with a league record fine of $500,000 for illegally videotaping opponents during games and took away the Patriots' first round pick in 2008.  

Belichik later told Patriots owner Robert Kraft that the illegal tapes only helped him by about one percent.

Peter King Wonders Why Washington Didn't Interview Bill Belichick

"I realize you try to get every edge," King said. "But when the league tells you the previous year, you can't do this, because they know you've been doing it, and then you do it again the next year? I mean Bill Belichick is a lot smarter than I ever will be about many things in life. He wasn't very smart that year."

Patrick asked King if there is a chance Belichick has coached his last NFL game. The Patriots fired Belichick after last season, and he did not get a new job after the season.

"I guess there is," King said, "because how in the world could there be seven openings other than New England's, and he gets one formal interview? I keep wondering. You're Josh Harris (Washington Commanders owner). You just paid $6 billion for this football team. Explain to me why you wouldn't sit in a room with Bill Belichick for a day? Or for six hours? At the very least, to simply download his brain. I will never understand why Washington did not interview Bill Belichick." 

King, a graduate of Ohio University, first covered the NFL in 1984 as a Bengals beat reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer. On Draft Day that year, he showed extreme initiative in getting exclusive interviews with defensive end Pete Koch and quarterback Boomer Esiason of Maryland - the Bengals' first and second round picks that day, respectively. 

Peter King picked up just-drafted Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Boomer Esiason at the airport on Draft Day in 1984. (Getty Images)

"I actually picked them up at the airport the day they got drafted," King said. "I conveniently hid them from the guy in the limo who was sent to pick them up from the Bengals."

King's two-door Volkswagen Rabbit did not go over well with Esiason, who had to squeeze into the back seat with the much larger Koch taking shotgun.

"Boomer was already pissed off about being picked in the middle of the second round," King laughed. "And he looks at the car and goes, ‘Welcome to the f-ing NFL!’"

Do Not Storm The Court, Says Peter King

King spoke on a popular topic this week - to storm the court or not storm the court.

"Who allows this idiotic stuff to happen? Where is the NCAA? But I've said that about the NCAA for the last three or four years," King said. "It is an idiotic, useless organization."

Patrick interjected, "You sound like a retired guy."

"Oh, I'm yelling at the clouds. I'm Clint Eastwood in ‘Gran Torino,’" King answered.

King also expressed amazement at Chip Kelly's recent move to a lesser job in college football.

"How in the world can the head coach at UCLA go to Ohio State to become the the offensive coordinator at a school in the same conference? What is wrong with this picture? I'll tell you what's wrong with this picture," he said. "The Pac-12 should be the Pac-12. The idiots who put the Pac-12 in the Big Ten are idiots. They just are. How would you like to be on the UCLA men's soccer team and have a road trip to State College, Pennsylvania (Penn State), or you name it? And you play one game, and then you get back on a plane and fly back to Los Angeles. Or two games. A bunch of idiots."

Patrick asked King what he will be doing on Sunday nights next season.

"Go to sleep happily," he said. "And I probably won't make it to the end of the Sunday night game, which will be a happy moment for me."

Peter King May Be One Of The Last Of His Breed

King said he planned his retirement in order to miss the NFL Scouting Combine currently going on in Indianapolis.

"I used to love going to the combine five, six, eight years ago," he said. "You're up to 1:30 every morning, but you're also spending 45 minutes with all these NFL coaches. You see them out, ‘Hey, how you doing, what’s going on?' You just sit with them, and you talk to them about whatever. And that is great. But I knew one of the reasons it's time to go is that I have no desire to stay up until 1:30 in the morning anymore to do anything. Sorry. That's the way it goes when you're 66."

King said goodbye, and Patrick closed the segment.

"You know what, he did it too well," Patrick said. "You set a standard, and you have to live up to that standard when you do a long form column, and all the stuff that he would put in there. It was must reading every Monday. There was always something that you could take out of there. A quote, a story, a rumor. Those kind of columnists, well newspapers, they're dying. What we ask of a columnist is different now. Peter was Old School."